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Suspend time for a month, put in brackets the regional crisis caused by the situation in Venezuela, food products to absent subscribers, the difficulties of everyday life ... and see works of art. After a break of four years, the 13th biennial biennale of Havana has unveiled since Friday and over the days the creations of invited artists, from all continents on the theme "The construction of all possibilities." If the Chinese delegation is the image of this country-continent, several creators from France also invest places steeped in history as the old colonial city, the seafront of Malecón (inaugurated this Sunday) or the district of Centro Habana: JR, Laurent Grasso, Yves Tremorin, Emmanuel Tussore ... are among the invited artists. And the Museum of Decorative Arts was delivered to Theo Mercier, sculptor and director who revisits for the occasion the palace of the Countess Revilla of Camargo.
special envoy to Havana,
Built in the 1920s in the then residential area of Vedado in Havana, the mansion was occupied by Maria Luisa Gomez Mena who belonged to one of the richest families of Cuba, ardent Francophile who had his clothing and jewelry by Dior and Cartier. Landowners, they were at the head of land and several ingenios, these processing companies of sugar cane, the green gold of Cuba. They also owned property in the Old City including the block on which was built what is today one of the most luxurious hotels in Havana, explains Gustavo Lopez, curator of the Museum of Decorative Arts. Maria Luisa, also countess by the grace of the kings of Spain was a great collector: porcelain precious China, curios, porcelain and furniture including France from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Unconditional to Marie-Antoinette, she acquired the secretary, one of the nails of the museum's collection. The mansion, inspired by Marie-Antoinette's Trianon, was designed and decorated by the prestigious Jansen House in Paris.
Reintroduce Cubanity
In 1959, during the revolution, the family fled Cuba and the house became a museum of decorative arts in 1964, the collections of the countess having been completed by pieces from other museums. In short, Cuba is singularly absent from this house. Nothing in the Countess's collections echoed Cuban or colonial culture. Theo Mercier has therefore worked to reinject cubanity in this bubble house out of time by interacting with the times and the objects he introduced into the house. At the door of the majestic marble hall, an installation of eggs ... in marble, maliciously entitled " los huevos de la condesa ", the eggs of the countess. Or again, " the Countess burying her treasures, " he explains. Also a nod to the egg shortages that are affecting Cuba right now, to these lucky rituals in Havana where we offer marble eggs, the purifying egg of the Afro-Cuban santeria ... Further on, in the baroque dining room, crabs have invaded space and assault the table.
Wooden crabs, again made by Cuban craftsmen and which the tourist can buy for the sum of 2 cuc, the convertible currency. These crabs that invade the beaches of the south of the island to mate precisely at this time, and which evoke a " sexual orgy " but also the indecent splendor of the dinners of the good society and " the parasitism by the populace of the remains of the Lord's Supper .
Théo Mercier made three trips to prepare this exhibition. While visiting the house, he " discovered that he was everywhere except in Cuba ," he explains, disgusted to discover that this countess was eager to bring everything from all over Europe ... the only thing that comes from Cuba in the house is the wood of the doors but it was still sent to France to be carved and painted and sent back to Havana. My artistic gesture was to correct, a century later the 'bad deeds' of the countess and to present the beauty of local materials and manufactures . Work with locally made objects, a point on which Theo Mercier particularly insists: this is part of his approach to understand, to appropriate the country.
To make dialogue between the ages
For him, it is a question of inverting the fantasy: the Cuban countess dreams of France, the artist dreams of Cuba and reinjects it in the house, making dialogue between times. Thus, the mid-staircase portrait of this pensive little girl, " languid ", reminiscent of the bullfighters in the Montmartre market, and marinated in the craft market, entitled " Souvenir of a counter-revolutionary little girl ". It took three trips to the artist to soak up places, home and Havana, plus meetings and readings like the book by Reynaldo Arenas, Before the Night , which inspired him " The Wall " installed on the patio, these paintings of paradisiacal beaches guarded by two cerberes in bronze, which return to the closed space that is the island. " A paradise-hell dialogue that everyone will read as he sees fit ".
A Cuban immersion that may have been facilitated by the fact that Théo Mercier lives between Paris and Mexico, seduced by the archeology of this country, the thousand-sheet of its history, the wealth of its culture and its artisans who " have incredible know-how. I learn a lot of techniques and there are not many places in the world where crafts are not dedicated to tourism and therefore disembodied . The beautiful carpets of the Countess are no longer trodden by the Dukes of Windsor or the Counts of Barcelona; we do not dance chachacha anymore. At the inauguration on Saturday resounded the song Do not Leave Me , title of the exhibition of Theo Mercier, interpreted in French for an audience still very francophile. The countess's spirit still haunts the walls.
►The website of the Biennial of Arts of Havana